


Once More Into The Fray

by Asami_T



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alien Biology, Darth Vader Needs a Hug, Gen, Gray Jedi, Gray Sith, Planet Tatooine (Star Wars), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Puberty, Redemption, Tatooine Slave Culture (Star Wars), Tatooine Slave Revolution (Star Wars), The Force
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:41:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29087760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asami_T/pseuds/Asami_T
Summary: There was nothing to be gained here-- the Force was permanently damaged,never to heal or grow again. It was likely within a few centuries, theForce would disappate into nothingness across this universe, and all thelegends and stories would be long forgotten, mere tales to be told tochildren.So... there was little choice to make.Into the fray, again.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 63





	1. The Power of the Force

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Have another "concept fic". I make no promises as to when/if/how this will be updated, but I am actively writing it. 
> 
> This fic may also be randomly edited at my leisure if I decide to reword/rewrite sections of it, just so you know.
> 
> I have a long list of WIPs and plot bunnies to chew on, and I mostly write whenever it strikes my fancy. Enjoy.

The last thing Vader saw as the darkness claimed him was Luke’s mournful face. It had taken him so _kriffing_ long but he’d finally destroyed the Sith. He’d finally realized that he was nothing more than a mere tool of Palpatine, a slave with a new chain– his son had set him free. He couldn’t be prouder.

But as he pierced the veil of death, he felt a distinct sense of something _wrong_ permeating everything. Though he no longer had a corporeal form, he was still very aware of the tremendous billowing fabric of the universe that was The Force. In the middle of it, centered over Coruscant and over Alderaan, were two tremendous gashes; deep, ugly scars oozing with pus and darkness.

Vader didn’t need to be an expert in all matters Force-related to know that fixing _that_ was… definitely not possible. The Force was permanently scarred, and it was only a matter of time before the damage reverberated back into others. He could already see the early stages of it– tiny, almost insignificant threads of the ooze were connecting to the closest conduit. The Force was gathering in…

Another pregnant woman– the Princess of Alderaan, his _daughter._

Vader could already see the darkness curling around the nascent foetus. The cruelty of it left Vader speechless.

Rage and anger poured from his ethereal soul into the Force, twisting and bending in the endless void. Suddenly, a tear ripped open in front of Vader, though this one was different. It was bathed in the light, of new chances, remorse, and opportunity. There was something distinctly familiar about it, but Vader wasn’t sure what.

There was nothing to be gained here– the Force was permanently damaged, never to heal or grow again. It was likely within a few centuries, the Force would disappate into nothingness across this universe, and all the legends and stories would be long forgotten, mere tales to be told to children.

So… there was little choice to make.

Into the fray, again.

…

With a jerk, Vader collapsed to his knees and started coughing and dry-heaving– which in itself was most unusual as the former Sith apprentice hadn’t had proper lungs _or_ a stomach in close to 25 years. The rushing sound of the Force all around Vader, combined with the high whine of a ship’s engine deafened anything around the former Sith Lord.

After a few seconds, he felt himself being picked up off the ground. Everything felt _off_. He could smell, everything was dark but not clouded in the hazy red he’d gotten used to, and his head was _pounding_. Looking up, he came face to face with someone whose face had been haunting him for years.

“Snips,” escaped his lips before he grasped his throat in alarm. That was definitely not his voice–neither the voice he’d had as Darth Vader, nor the voice he’d had as Anakin Skywalker.

He recognized the voice that had passed his own lips.

_How?_

“Shh.” She pressed her finger to her lips before she glanced behind herself. She took a deep breath and seemed satisfied. She looked him in the eyes carefully.

“Is that you, Anakin?” she asked warily.

“Yes,” he said softly. “What’s going on?”

“That’s a good question,” Ahsoka said. “The last I remember, you were dead– and I’d just sent off a Mandalorian and his force-sensitive foundling.”

“A force-sensitive foundling?” Vader asked with a curious expression.

“Grogu– he should be in the créche right about now,” Ahsoka said with a huff. “The attachment he had, and the fear I could feel in him. He reminded me too much of you. The Mandalorian demanded I train him in the ways of the Jedi, but I… couldn’t. Not after seeing what it did to you.”

She shook her head, trying to dismiss the bad memories.

“What’s the last thing _you_ remember?” she asked carefully, watching Vader through narrowed eyes.

“Well, for starters, I’d just thrown the Emperor down a cooling shaft,” Vader said wryly. “All of my life support systems got shorted out and I died in my son’s arms. I floated through the endless void for awhile, and saw just how badly the galaxy had been damaged, and how the scars over Coruscant and what was once Alderaan were feeding the growth of the dark side in my own grandson.”

“The Emperor died about five years ago– at least for me,” Ahsoka said wryly. “It seems the two of us have been sent back to do something about that. And judging by what’s in front of me, the Force sent us back quite a long time.”

“I am almost afraid to ask,” Vader said, gently massaging his slender throat. He was loathe to acknowledge what happened. “Is it as bad as I think?”

“I wouldn’t say it’s _bad_ ,” Ahsoka said, eyemarking raised. “It could’ve been worse. I’d say I’m not exactly a horrifying monster, am I?”

“Being a forty-five year old man stuck inside of his fourteen-year-old padawan’s body is not my idea of a good time, Ahsoka,” Vader said irritably– which looked like a temperamental pout on a fourteen year old girl.

A knock came on the door, and Ahsoka quickly threw her hood on and stepped back away from the door into the corner of the room. Vader rose to his feet and went to the door and opened it, revealing a clone. Vader fought down the urge to cringe, but smoothened out his features.

“Initiate Tano, we’ll be arriving in the Christophsis system in ten minutes,” the clone said.

“Um, thank you,” Vader said lamely as the clone turned and left. Vader closed the door again before glancing at the hooded woman. “Christophsis. So we definitely know that this is before you were my padawan.”

“Before you’re your own padawan,” Ahsoka said with a snort. “Oh, that’ll be fun– watching you keep up after yourself.”

“As if I would lower myself to babysitting _Jedi_ ,” Vader said with a grunt. “Do you realize that being around _myself_ is going to also mean being around _her_?”

“Padmé,” Ahsoka breathed. “Oh dear.”

“Even now, I can absolutely not do it– twenty-three years is not long enough for the scars to heal,” Vader said defiantly.

Ahsoka nodded absently. “You’re right,” she said. “So then, what do you plan to do? Hijack a Republic cruiser and fly away?”

“Our goal here is to rebalance the Force, is it not?” Vader asked, thoughtfully. “Does any part of that say we have to be Jedi? You’ve still got lightsabers, correct?”

Ahsoka nodded once with her eyemarking raised at him to continue, and Vader sighed.

“I have this one,” he said, pulling Ahsoka’s very first lightsaber from the holster on his side. One that she had lost after being expelled from the Jedi Order, but one that would suit their purposes for now. “I’ll need a few days to think about it, but I’m already starting to get some interesting ideas– but the first thing I think we need to do is get to Tatooine.”

“Tatooine?” Ahsoka asked. “Why Tatooine?”

“Out of the way, and I’m familiar with it. I have an idea where we could run into quite a few people who can help us. The Force wants me to do what I promised to do as a child, free the slaves, and that is a good first step to throwing a hydrospanner right into Palpatine’s plans. You and I are going to do that _and_ balance the force at the same time.”

“That’s… definitely a plan. You know, I’m technically the adult here,” Ahsoka said wryly. “If anybody should be trying to figure out what to do, it’s definitely me.”

“You are the same age as I am– mentally at least,” Vader retorted. “Do not assume that my powers are weakened by being in the body of a teenager. We’ll be partners in this venture. We can prevent all the terrible things from happening, and give everyone a happier life. If Padmé survives, and this Anakin can avoid the mistakes I made, then I will consider it a victory.”

“It was a joke,” Ahsoka said. “Did you forget those existed too?”

“I am afraid I do not have much of a sense of humor anymore,” Vader deadpanned. “Being stuck in a life support suit with all of your skin and organs damaged beyond repair will do that to you.”

The awkward silence lingered for a second as Ahsoka regarded him warily.

“Sign me up,” she said at last. “I think you’re right that we can maybe fix things before they get out of hand. Though, can I just say this? It’s going to be weird working with a child version of myself that’s actually my former master-turned-adversary. The Force has a wicked sense of humour.”

“I agree,” Vader deadpanned. “Now, first thing is first– how do we disappear without the Jedi following us?”

…

The answer to that question turned out to be, in fact, sabotage. The ship they were on wasn’t a very large ship, the Republic Navy couldn’t allocate enough large ships to interdict the Seperatists at Christophsis over the long term, but the number of clones deployed on-planet plus the presence of the much-feared Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi was hoped to be the driving point that would break the efforts of the Seppies in the sector.

Neither Vader nor Ahsoka was entirely happy at the prospect of sabotaging a ship full of clones, but both had agreed that needs must– getting involved with Obi-Wan, Anakin, the Jedi and all sorts of other things would not end well, most likely with Vader being driven back over the edge into the dark side.

And now Ahsoka and Vader were squeezed into a tight engine compartment, the former Sith Lord watching the older woman go to town.

“When did you get so adept with sabotaging ships?” Vader asked, the white face-marking that would have been an eyebrow raising with curiousity.

“These ships aren’t too different from the troop transports used during the Imperial era,” Ahsoka said idly as she set the timed sonic charge. “I’m surprised you’ve gotten so rusty with mechanics.”

“While under Sidious’ thrall, there was only one thing he felt me good enough for– slaughter,” Vader said darkly. “The most I’ve had time to tinker with since Mustafar was my personal TIE fighter, and even then only infrequently.”

They lapsed into silence before Vader spoke.

“Did you ever regret leaving the Jedi Order?” he asked, glancing at the woman, who snorted.

“Anakin, that was… well over twenty-five years ago,” Ahsoka said. “I regret leaving _you_ behind to suffer and become that monster you used to be, but… no, I don’t regret leaving the Jedi Order.”

Vader nodded. “I regret staying. I should have left with you. There was nothing to keep me attached to the _Jedi_.”

“Not all Jedi are bad, Skyguy,” Ahsoka said wryly, using the nickname she’d given him a few hours from now– or an entire lifetime ago, in another point of view.

“No, not all Jedi,” Vader said, looking remorseful. “But I cannot do it– I can’t pretend to be my own padawan, and go back to that Temple again. It would be too much. I’d rather we do this and carve our own path in the galaxy.”

“I agree,” Ahsoka said softly. “You won’t have to go through this alone. We’ve made the mistake of leaving each other alone before– it brought nothing but misery. I’ll be with you until the very end. Okay?”

She was startled when she was suddenly hugged by the shorter Togruta.

“Thanks, Snips,” Vader said. “You have no idea how much that means to me.”

…

“General Yoda, sir,” the clone saluted. “I regret to inform you sir that our ship was severely damaged en route to Christophsis.”

“Damaged?” Yoda asked, concern lining his features.

“Yes, sir. Catastrophic engine failure. Approximately half the ship, including all of our escape pods and sonar arrays were damaged. We had to be rescued by the Opportunity.”

“The VIP, what of her?”

“I’m sorry to say that she didn’t make it,” the clone said. “Her quarters was on the half of the ship that was destroyed. Recovery efforts are underway, but sir… there’s very little left of anything now– it was either incinerated, spaced, or vaporized.”

Yoda closed his eyes and shook his head. More young lives lost in this pestilential war.

“Understand, I do. Coordinate a supply shipment for Skywalker and Kenobi, I will.”

“Yes, sir. CT-6101 out,” the clone chirped as the line went dead.

“Disturbed, the Force is. Changed, things have…” Yoda murmured. “What to do now, I wonder…”

…

“Are you sure you want to go back to Tatooine?” Ahsoka asked Vader carefully as she set a cup of kaf in front of him. Their escape pod had just enough rations stashed in it to last them the trip to Tatooine and a few days after. From there, they’d have to scrape and scrounge.

“It’s the best place to start,” Vader said firmly. “Naboo, Alderaan, Coruscant– they are all far too orderly to do the kind of things we need to do.”

“I’m just concerned about your well-being if we go back to that infernal ball of sand,” Ahsoka said wryly.

“I will be fine,” Vader huffed. “Jabba and his clan have governed Tatooine for close to five-centuries at this point in time. Their primary base of power is Jabba’s palace, which we should both be intimately familiar with. We cannot attack it head on– even with two lightsabers, it would be a terrible decision. What we will need to do however, is destabilize the status quo. I can think of two possible ways to do so.”

“Let me guess, both of them involve slave uprisings?” Ahsoka asked.

“Correct,” Vader said with a nod. “The Hutts have a great deal of influence over the local governance. This institutional influence is primarily buoyed by the large number of minor slavemasters who support them, and are supported by them. Their primary motivators are fear of Republic oversight and the enforcement of anti-slavery laws, plus the threat that the Tuskens pose. Tatooine has no central government, merely rule by strength.”

“Is the slavery limited to just the cities?” Ahsoka asked, grimacing.

“No,” Vader responded. “Settlements such as Anchorhead, Toshe Station, and even the moisture farms on the Dune Sea and other areas frequently use slave labour, depending on their size. Smaller moisture farms however, do not.”

“Killing Jabba alone won’t stop slavery on Tatooine. You know that,” Ahsoka said.

“I do,” Vader said with a nod. “The other Hutts split up Jabba’s lucrative trade network while Bib Fortuna does his best to continue the Hutt activities at the behest of his new paymasters. To get rid of the tumorous growths, we must cut it out at the root.”

“You’re suggesting _killing_ them all?” Ahsoka asked warily.

“Not all of them, but most of them– the landlords. Bottom-feeding scum like them. If most of their labour comes from slaves, then their lives are forfeit,” Vader said, folding his arms. “The sentients of Tatooine are entitled to all that they create. They have no need for people like the Hutts, or _Watto_ to tell them what they can or cannot do. Life is hard enough on Tatooine without masters.”

Vader visibly startled before a sad look crossed his face. “The Force mocks me, doesn’t it. It brought me here too late.”

“Too late?” Ahsoka asked, looking in worry at Vader. “Too late for what?”

“To save my mother,” Vader said darkly. “She died shortly before the Battle of Geonosis. I suppose a lot happened during the Clone Wars. Between my mother’s death, my marriage to Padmé, and then getting you as a padawan. It is no wonder that I cracked under the pressure… though this does create a concern as to Skywalker– the one on Christophsis. We may have to figure out how to get to him sooner, rather than later.”

“If we throw Sidious off his game, I doubt he’ll be able to get Anakin to fall,” Ahsoka observed.

“If he can convince Anakin that Padmé’s life is in danger without his help, Anakin will fall,” Vader said with a snort. “We need to work as quickly as time will permit. The longer this war rages on, the worse it will be.”

…

The evacuation shuttle needed to be let down somewhere that wouldn’t draw unnecessary attention. It was one thing to arrive in a stolen ship– that sort of thing happened incredibly frequently in Tatooine’s starports, but arriving in a Republic emergency transport? That was an entirely different set of circumstances.

Instead of landing somewhere completely populated, Vader navigated the ship into the cavernous area north of Mos Espa. As they landed, the former Sith Lord seemed to change from melancholic to quite gleeful.

“I have come up with an idea,” Vader said with a slight smirk as he looked at his companion. “In Mos Espa there is a Toydarian junk trader named Watto. We will use him to acquire a base of operations, capital and, with hope, the means to help the slaves.”

“Why would a Toydarian junk trader be of any use to us?” Ahsoka asked.

“Watto is not just any mere junk trader, Ahsoka. He was my former master, before Qui-Gon freed me. The reason he will be of use to us is that I know how we are going to steal his shop right out from underneath him.”

Ahsoka gave Vader a curious look, as if expecting the younger Togruta to explain.

“Watto loves to gamble,” Vader said simply. “It is how he _won_ my mother and I from Gardulla the Hutt, and it is how he lost me to Qui-Gon Jinn. His typical fare is podracing bets, but I know for a fact he is also a frequent player of sabacc. He would frequently go to a local sabacc parlor in Mos Espa every Midweek and Fifthday– those were the days that I was allowed to leave work early.”

“So what’s your plan, go to the sabacc parlor and basically goad him into betting his shop?”

“Correct– from there, we will set ourselves up as a repair shop. Between the two of us, there is very little we cannot repair. That will be our front to ingratiate ourselves to slave masters and slaves alike, and where we will help build up enough capital to begin importing weapons and other materials to prepare for a general revolt.”

“I do not believe we’ll stand out too much. We’ll be immediately clocked as off-worlders, but I think that is more to do with the fact we are Togruta more than anything else… though once we’ve established ourselves, it would not hurt to try to blend in a bit.”

Vader sighed and looked down at himself before grimacing. “Though I must ask why you thought wearing an outfit like this into a combat zone was wise. I am going to wear something else as soon as I possibly can.”

Ahsoka rubbed her jaw and grinned a bit. “If you absolutely must know, it was actually a bet. This friend of mine from the créche, she and I bet each other that we’d be the first one to get made a Padawan. The loser would have to wear… _that_ to our first meeting with our new master.”

Vader stared at her in disbelief. “ _A bet_?”

“Yeah,” Ahsoka said, rather lamely. “When you’re fourteen and do stupid things, you know… in my defense, I didn’t anticipate our mission going from ‘relieve Christophsis’ to ‘save Jabba’s son’ so quickly. I learned rather quickly that nothing is ever simple with Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

Vader let himself laugh, a deep bellyful laugh that lead to him being doubled over, shaking with mirth.

“Such has been the story of my life,” he finally said once he’d finally stopped laughing.

…

Ahsoka had their lightsabers tucked inside of her cowl, hidden from sight. Vader couldn’t hide his all things considered, and so they needed to be careful as to how they presented themselves. Masking their presence in the Force, they trekked the small way through the desert into Mos Espa.

Briefly glancing at the chrono, Vader gave a hum.

“We need to gather some capital,” Vader said firmly. “Republic credits are utterly worthless here– we need wupiupi, and enough of it for the buy-in at the sabacc parlor. There might be a way for us to get some wupiupi though without having to resort to theft. I… believe I know of a place to go. Follow me, and don’t draw attention to yourself.”

Vader and Ahsoka made their way through the busy streets of Mos Espa before arriving at a rather unassuming looking building with no exterior markings. Walking around the back of it into the narrow alleyway, Vader stopped before a door, and knocked on it in a rhythmic pattern.

A bulbous droid eye popped out of the wall and looked at Vader critically. Vader drew himself up to as impressive of a stature as he could make with a fourteen year old’s body, and spoke in fluent Huttese– indicating that not even the passage of time and being thrown back into someone else’s body could erase one’s history. The droid voice responded and Vader gave a quick retort that had the droid disappear inside. The door opened, and a Rodian glared at the two of them.

“Come in,” he hissed in Basic, ushering them in. Neither person missed the blaster he was holding in his hand.

“Never seen either of you before,” he said tightly. “What brings you to my little part of this shit paradise?”

“Forgive me for not informing you ahead of time,” Vader said tightly, before bowing and speaking in a language that Ahsoka most assuredly did not recognize. The man blinked and lowered the blaster, before responding in kind. They carried a brief conversation for a few minutes before Vader placed a hand on Ahsoka’s arm.

“She is my sister by bond,” Vader said simply, this time in Basic.

“Sister? She looks like she could be your mum, little girl,” the man said with a laugh.

Vader snorted. “Now, do you understand why I require your services, Etan?”

“Naturally. I thought you were an off-worlder, but…” Etan said with a snort. “What can I do for you, _Ekkreth Leia_?”

Vader smirked some. “I require you to exchange Republic credits for Huttese wupiupi. My sister and I have a plan that will require capital– Tatooine capital, to succeed. I promise that if you assist us, you will be handsomely rewarded.”

Etan regarded Vader carefully before nodding. “How much?”

Ahsoka reached into her cowl and drew out a small bag of credits, depositing them in Vader’s hand. Vader handed the small bag over to Etan. “One thousand credits.”

“1600 wupiupi? What are you planning, girl?”

“That is for me to know and nobody to find out,” Vader said simply. “Do we have a deal, Etan?”

“Yeah,” Etan said, setting the credits down and handing Vader another bag. Vader opened it and checked the contents, before nodding.

“Good,” Vader said. “Thank you for your assistance, Etan.”

As they left, Ahsoka glanced at Vader with a questioning look, asking many questions over their fragile bond. Vader snorted.

_I will explain later, Ahsoka._

…

Getting into the sabacc parlor was trivial. Tatooine had no such reservations on “legal age” for anything, and so it was to no surprise that on the evening of Midweek, Ahsoka and Vader were both seated at the table along with a number of others, including the Toydarian they’d been targeting.

With a rather sizable amount of funds to play with, Ahsoka and Vader played it cool. They broke up their winning streaks with a couple losses, but managed to slowly pad their initial 1600 wupiupi investment into close to ten-times that as the night wore on. Eventually, they managed to entrap Watto into a hand he could not win, and the stakes were getting higher with each bet and call. The other players had long since bowed out, including Ahsoka, leaving only Vader and Watto, going back and forth.

Ultimately, Vader had the upper hand and called the Toydarian’s bluff.

“It looks like you don’t have enough funds to meet my call,” Vader trilled with a smirk. “Surely you have something else that can stand in the stead of some measily cash?”

“Fine,” Watto grumbled. “I’ll-a bet my property on it. That’s all I’ve-a got.”

Vader smirked, before laying down his cards. “Twenty-three.”

Watto looked shocked before throwing his cards down. “You cheating, no good, karking sleemo bitch!” he shouted.

“Me? Cheating?” Vader said with mock shock, before drawing a blaster and aiming it at Watto. “Are you going to honor your bet or _not_ , Toydarian?”

Watto’s fatal mistake was trying to reach for his blaster. Overestimating his chances against a fourteen year old Togruta, he found himself being shot not just by the diminutive Sith, but also by the elder Togruta, the Hutt that had been at the table, along with an outlander Bothan. The Toydarian fell over to the ground unmoving, and Vader slowly lowered his blaster back into it’s holster.

“I take it nobody has objections to me taking the pot _and_ Watto’s possessions?” Vader asked darkly.

“It is only fair– many of us owed the Toydarian debt,” the Hutt said genially. “You have played well, young one, and have gotten us out of such obligations. Go in peace, for you have cleaned us out.”

“You do honor justice, Great Hyaada,” Vader said, bowing his head to the grotesque slug that played host to their little game, before collecting their winnings into a bag provided by the Hutt’s majordomo and leaving with haste.

“That went… unexpectedly well,” Ahsoka muttered as they stepped out into the sandy night. Watto’s speederbike was still parked by the door, and Vader walked over to it, kicking it once and mounting it.

“One thing you should always know about Tatooine is that justice here is very much bigger gun wins,” Vader said. “Now we’re in business– and we’ve got plenty of work to do.”

Ahsoka climbed onto the speeder. “You still owe me answers,” she said firmly.

“Once we get to his shop, I’ll explain everything,” Vader said, kickstarting the speeder and taking off down the road towards their newly acquired junk shop.

…

The shopfront part of things didn’t look much different than what Vader remembered it to be. Walking up to the counter where he’d first met his wife and the Jedi, he let out a low, dark chuckle.

“I never thought I’d be back here again,” he said wryly. “I’ve freed worlds, I’ve conquered worlds, and yet, in the end, I ended up right back where I started. This infernal junk shop.”

“We don’t have to stay here. We have enough money, we could do something else,” Ahsoka pointed out.

“No,” Vader said firmly. “I need to confront my demons. I need to… I need to do this. I promised I would free the slaves, and I intend to _keep_ that promise this time. Anakin Skywalker is parading himself around the galaxy for a failing state and a failing ideal, but I won’t let that stop me from doing what he never could.”

Vader sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I promised you answers, didn’t I?”

“What was that with the smuggler?” Ahsoka asked, confused. “I’ve never heard that language before.”

“You wouldn’t,” Vader said simply. “Amatakka is a secret language shared among the slave underclass of Tatooine. The smuggler knew that I was a friendly because of it– and not in the pay of the Hutts.”

“The slaves of Tatooine have their own language?” Ahsoka asked.

“An entire culture, really,” Vader replied, folding his arms. “My last name, Skywalker, is a direct translation from Amatakka. _Ekkreth_ is the trickster god that helps the slaves make free and escape the Depur– the Master. There is a great deal of natural mythos built into the sands of Tatooine that we, as slaves, have looked to for hope and inspiration for generations.”

“He called you _Ekkreth Leia_. Leia Skywalker?” Ahsoka asked.

“Leia is a name that has many meanings. On Alderaan, it means ‘flower blossom’. On Tatooine, it is the name of the Mighty One. I can no longer be _Anakin_ , the one who brings the rain,” Vader said simply. “But perhaps I can be like both the Mighty One and the Rebel Princess and cleanse the galaxy of the taint that Sidious has infected it with.”

“Won’t calling yourself Skywalker attract Anakin’s attention?” Ahsoka asked thoughtfully. “There aren’t any other Skywalkers in the galaxy, so…”

“It might,” Vader said with a wry grin at the elder Togruta. “But that does not matter– if Anakin abandons the Jedi and joins us in our crusade, all the better. If he ignores the call of his people, then perhaps I, or rather _he_ was never sincere in conviction to begin with. But who knows– two Skywalkers will definitely raise eyebrows.”

“Two Skywalkers?” Ahsoka asked.

“You cannot call yourself Ahsoka Tano,” Vader said simply. “Ahsoka Tano was a fourteen year old Jedi initiate who died a tragic death in the middle of space. You must be someone else– and I would be honoured for you to join me and take the name _Ekkreth_. There are two people in this galaxy that I would call my sibling– and you are one of them, Ahsoka.”

…

The first few days weren’t all “tons of progress”, owing largely to getting settled into things, and dealing with things that came up. The very next day after Watto’s untimely demise, Anakin’s old friend, and fellow slave Wald had shown up for work and both Vader and Ahsoka had given each other a nervous look.

“I forgot you were still here, Wald,” Vader had said in Amatakka, earning a startled look from the teenaged Rodian. From his calculations, he genuinely hadn’t seen Wald since the day he won the Boonta Eve Classic. What a damn sight for sore eyes the kid was. “It’s been a long time.”

“You speak Amatakka. Have we met before?” Wald asked curiously in Huttese.

“In a … rather cyclical way of speaking,” Vader said simply. “Do you remember Anakin Skywalker?”

“Ani,” Wald said, whistling. “That takes me back– I haven’t seen him in ten years. Last I heard he’d been picked up by the _jedaii_.”

“Yes, well… ah, how do I put this…” Vader said, before he frowned and looked at the young Rodian carefully. “There is a cache of credits buried underneath a rusted out speeder on this property. You and I buried it together to avoid Watto catching us. Those credits were to be used to buy our freedom some day, and we’d run away with Kitster and become smugglers.”

Wald had a stunned look on his face before he blinked. “ _Ani?_ ”

“Hi, Wald,” Vader said softly. “As long as it’s been since you’ve last seen Anakin, it’s been even longer for me.”

“What the kriff?” Wald asked, confused. “How- why- what-”

“It’s hard to explain. Can I just summarize it by saying wizard Jedi shit?” Vader offered.

Wald laughed. “Sounds about right, weird shit always did happen around you. Why the hell did you come back here?”

“Had no choice. I spent 13 years as a Jedi, fell to the Sith, spent another 23 years as a Sith, died in my son’s arms, woke up in the body of my padawan. That’s her as an adult, by the way,” Vader said, gesturing to Ahsoka who was watching the entire thing with a mildly perturbed look on her face. “She lived another… five years after I died?”

Ahsoka confirmed it with a nod and Wald shook his head.

“You came back, though? _Why?_ ”

“I made a promise, didn’t I? I never… I never lived up to that promise, and I want to live up to it now. I’m here to set the slaves free.”

“Set the slaves free,” Wald said, rubbing the top of his head with his hand. “You never do things by halves, do you, Skywalker?”

“Nope,” Vader said, folding his arms.

“And all this Jedi magic shit turned you into a cute little Togruta?” Wald asked.

“… basically,” Vader muttered. “Don’t forget that I can still kick your ass, though– no matter how many years pass.”

Wald snorted, before doubling over in laughter. “Anakin…”

“Call me Leia for now,” Vader said with a frown. “There is an Anakin Skywalker still out there in the stars. That part of me died a long time ago.”

Wald frowned. “Was it that bad?”

“I became a slave again, to a man far worse than any master here on this hell world,” Vader said, shaking his head. “For now, I am Leia Skywalker, and I am joined by my sister, Maru Skywalker.”

“Leia and Maru,” Wald said appreciatively. “Good names.”

“Indeed,” Vader said with a quirk of his lips. “Auspicious purpose and ideals. Now that you’re here, Wald, if you give me a few days, I’ll put together something that can disable your slave chip, and then you are free to go, or stay, if you so choose. We could use as much help as we can to build up the army that will take it to the Hutts and the landlords.”

“Hell,” Wald said with a grin. “Count me in.”

“How is Kitster doing?” Vader asked. “Is he a free man?”

“Yeah– the money you gave him from the Boonta Eve Classic helped him get a job at the Three Moons. He’s a free man now, but he still works there as a steward. Rarta Dal pays him decently enough, but he’s mentioned wanting to get into smuggling now that he has nothing to keep him here.”

“The Three Moons,” Vader said thoughtfully, with a smirk. “We might have to pay Kitster a visit.”

But that was to be put off for now– Wald was incredibly useful for spreading word among the slave networks that there were two Skywalkers on Tatooine that owned Watto’s shop, and that the newly rechristened “Combined Mechanics” was a place for slaves to get low-cost repairs done, and to seek safety from their masters. On the flip side, the new shop gained some reputation among masters for being a far sight more hospitable and easier to get a satisfactory deal out of than the old Toydarian had been.

Of course, Wald knew that a lot of that had to do with Leia and Maru doing Jedi mind shit, not that he minded. Any money they fleeced off the masters and used to fund slave uprisings was exactly the sort of thing he could get behind.

…

> _I’m glad Watto had a piece of karking shit droid that actually works with a little tinkering. This reminds me a lot of when I had Threepio. Constantly salvaging new parts. Anyway, uh… right. Wald and Ahsoka both have… told me that it is smart for me to talk through my problems and record them for my own personal benefit to review later._

> _So… Log #1. It’s been hell getting used to the pre-Imperial calendar again, but here we are. If my chrono isn’t completely shot, it is currently Hopewatch 52, 500… a little after 92 kiloseconds. It’s been so long since we started calling months “Remembrance”, “Victory”, “Glory” and all sorts of other names that I completely forgot how the Republic counted time._

> _I happened to see the news today, and the Battle of Christophsis continues to rage. I don’t remember how long it lasted the last time, but I don’t believe it took this long. It’s been just over a halfweek since Ahsoka and I arrived on Tatooine. Anakin Skywalker, for all the annoyance and arrogance that he represents of my past, I cannot say that I wanted this to happen– he will be deprived one of the most electric and contributive presences in his life. Something that I will value in this life and the next, he will miss completely. It is quite a shame, but I suppose it is for the best._

> _On more important matters: Our plan thus far seems to be working as intended. Wald has been an instrumental asset to the cause, and we’ve seen a decided uptick in business, and with that, we’ve been able to gather significant capital to use for off-world purchases. Ahsoka believes that our best bet for acquiring weapons without significant attention from the Hutts is to source our own smugglers. Kitster Banai may very well serve that purpose, provided we can get him a ship…_

…

Three days later, Vader and Ahsoka decided to do some reconnaissance to Jabba’s palace. Leaving Wald in charge of watching the shop, the two Togruta made their way to the fortress of Tatooine’s most infamous gangster. The purpose of the trip was to see what kind of defenses could be exploited, and how likely it would be for their slave army to invade the palace.

From his memories, Vader knew that the _exterior_ of the palace had very little in the way of armaments, but the inner layout and heavily armed nature of Jabba’s mercenaries and slavers made it a difficult proposition.

To no surprise however, the two former Jedi found that there were numerous security exploits in Jabba’s palace that would serve as a tremendous boon in arming the slaves inside for a general revolt. To that end, they decided to check to see if the routes accessible via these unsecure entrances would lead them anywhere useful– such as the armory or control room.

Vader was actually walking by himself, crouched low and trying to keep as silently as possible (all while thanking the various gods for the ability to _quietly sneak up on someone_.)

As he rounded a corner, he literally ran into someone. The two people were sent sprawling, and Vader growled. He needed to act quick before they raised the alarm. Drawing his lightsaber, he came up to swing, only to clash instantly into a crimson lightsaber. Vader’s eyes drifted over to the snarling face of Asajj Ventress.

“Ventress,” he muttered darkly.

“Jedi,” she replied, narrowing her eyes.

Vader scoffed. “I am no Jedi,” he proclaimed, throwing her with the Force and leading up with another salle against the Dathomiri woman.

Asajj slid her blade forward and caught Vader’s own and forced the smaller person back. “Perhaps you’re right, no Jedi would be so foolish as to charge into battle like that,” she said with amusement in her voice.

“You will find that my powers are vast, and are only limited by my size, Ventress,” Vader said darkly, before surging forward and clashing with Asajj, who was hard-pressed to parry each of Vader’s attacks, before she found herself skidding across the ground.

Vader stared at her for a few seconds before disabling his saber. “There is nothing to gain from this,” he spat. “You are here to kidnap Rotta the Hutt, are you not?”

“How did you know?” Ventress threatened, her lightsaber still illuminating the corridor in a familiar crimson red.

“You will be surprised to learn that there is a great deal I do know. Like that Dooku and Sidious have no intentions of leaving you alive once they’re done with you. You will serve your purpose, _for now_ , as a good little Sith slave, but when you have outlived your usefulness, you will be replaced.”

Ventress’ grip on her saber tightened, and she glared at Vader. “You are lying,” she spat back, just as venomously.

“Am I? Sidious already knows who he wants to be his apprentice. You and Dooku are merely ‘good enough’. He seeks to turn the golden poster child of the Jedi to the way of the Sith, and when that is done, you will be terminated as a threat to his rule.”

Asajj hesitated and Vader waved his hand dismissively. “It does not matter if you believe me or not, Ventress. You are here to do a job– I gain everything from letting you go on your way. Let the fat corpulent Hutt be distracted by this small matter.”

Asajj turned her lightsaber off, regarded Vader with narrowed eyes, before turning and running down the corridor. Once she disappeared, Vader shook his head and reached out with the Force.

_Ahsoka._

_Vader?_

_We must leave. I just ran into Asajj Ventress. She is going to kidnap the Huttling. We should be nowhere near here when that happens._

_Karking shit. Meet up at the speeder?_

_That is acceptable._

Vader made his way out of the Hutt’s palace and back out into the sands of Tatooine. Through the shadowy night, Vader retreated back to where they had stashed their speeder, and was soon joined by Ahsoka. Before anybody could notice, they tore off back into the night.

“With his son missing, the Hutt won’t be paying close attention to Tatooine’s affairs,” Vader said. “This may be a turning point for us. We can start greasing the palms of smugglers and get the imports we need to prepare for the uprising. We need to figure out exactly what and when, though. I don’t know how long it took us to save Rotta last time, but I imagine Anakin will not be long without an apprentice.”

“Three months was my estimate,” Ahsoka replied. “For us to import arms and materials, disable most of the slave implants, and prepare for a general uprising all over Tatooine. It means nothing if Mos Espa is the only city to revolt.”

“Indeed,” Vader said. “And even then, we will need to ensure that Jabba _dies_. If he remains alive, it will galvanize the scum to his side. We need to break their wills, so that they can’t threaten what we create. Frankly, I have concerns over if we’ll even able to hold without some presence in the skies– the Hutts do not have a large fleet, but they have deep pockets and can pay the worst sorts of mercenaries.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Ahsoka murmured. “Keep the faith, Anakin.”

…

Kitster numbly sat down in his chair and placed his head between his legs. After a second or two he took a deep breath and looked at Vader carefully. “You’re not joking, are you?”

“No,” Vader said simply. “I made you a promise, Kitster. I intend to honour it, the question remains on if you’re able to assist me.”

“Anakin-” Kitster began.

“Leia,” Vader corrected. “As I explained to you, there still exists an Anakin Skywalker out there in the galaxy– let him keep his name. It is one that I have not actively used for myself in over twenty years.”

“Right, Leia,” Kitster said, shaking his head. “You do realize how absolutely _wizard_ this plan is? You’re going to arm the entire slave population to rise up, and somehow win?”

“Why would we not win? In my timeline, my daughter choked Jabba the Hutt to death with her slave chains, and my son single-handedly marched into his chambers to demand the release of his friend. Believe me when I say that two _trained_ Force sensitives could do a great deal of damage to anything they set their minds to.”

“What do you need me to do?” Kitster asked.

“There’s a smuggler in town. Etan is his name, he’s typically a broker in exchanging currencies to help smuggle slaves off-world. Get with him and try to start buying materiel. While the Hutts are distracted with the kidnapping of Jabba’s son, we’ll have enough time to wedge our foot in the door.”

With a numb nod, he rose to his feet and quickly departed the shop.

…

> _My personal log, again._

> _Today’s Hopewatch 63. The good news is that Kitster and Wald have been working themselves ragged acquiring weapons– quality ones, for the incoming rebellion. They are doing a tremendous job of it, too. I got to observe one of the first shipments being brought in– and what a curious thing. They were stamped with GAR datecodes. Ahsoka and I wonder if there may be some Clones out there working for a higher cause than a dying republic._

> _Not all news is good, unfortunately. Based on the math and projections I’ve seen, we need more medical supplies to sustain the systematic dismantling of the slave inhibitors, and this still does not eradicate the issue of more slaves being imported to the markets by pirates. After Ahsoka and I’s last night-time venture to the slave markets, we lost two of the girls to infection after removing their chips. I was told it wasn’t my fault, but…_

> _It remains an unconscionable waste of life if we cannot remove these chips without death, and I cannot accept this as the cost of what we’re doing._

> _Being here has only made me wonder why I spent so much of the prime of my life– the only time of freedom I had, in the employ of a Republic that did not care. I often wonder if Anakin Skywalker is satisfied with himself, wherever he is– and if Tatooine will ever forgive him for abandoning them. But I will do what he did not– and I will not abandon them._

…

Ahsoka looked over the notes she’d put into her own personal datapad. She _had_ been given a rather invaluable opportunity. The Mandalorian and the affection he’d shown The Child had filled her full of regret for how someone like Anakin could fall so fast and so hard. At forty-five, she had many regrets from her teen years and young adulthood that through a stroke of luck… or Skywalker, had given her the chance to rectify.

The document on Vader’s mental condition was extensive, and full of notes that she’d been piecing together ever since they made their escape from the LAAT. A twenty-two year old war veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder suffering a crippling life-altering injury, spending twenty more years under the thrall of a tyrant as his personal enforcer, before ultimately rejoining the Light while dying in the arms of his son, whom he presumed dead for… most of his life. He was going to need _years_ of help to unbury himself from the miasma of self-loathing, and she had absolutely no idea how to… _really go about it?_

Her musings on Vader’s recovery plan was interrupted by the sound of pained mewling– even though she’d never had kids in her _life_ , the part of Ahsoka that was primal and instinctual recognized the sound immediately. A Togruta stripling in pain, and the only one she knew…

Ahsoka quickly carried herself up the stairs to their apartment above the shop. The mewling was much louder, and sound like a mixture of pained mewling and groaning. She found the source of the noise was, in fact, Vader.

The former Sith Lord was lying in bed, eyes clamped shut, hand pressed to the base of his montrals. Ahsoka recognized exactly what was wrong immediately– the onset of puberty for her species was the same event that allowed them to start using the sensory abilities in their montrals and lekku, and clearly Vader was taking it a little harder than she ever had as a teenager.

She walked over to Vader and gently pressed her hand against his forehead, and sent a calming pulse in the Force through it to settle her former master-turned-adversary down. Vader quieted, and after a couple minutes, managed to blearily open his eyes to look at her. She was relieved to see a pair of aqua blue ones reflecting back, rather than Sith gold.

“Snips,” he said weakly. “What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing’s wrong with you,” Ahsoka said earnestly. “You’re going through puberty.”

Vader gave her a half-lidded look and Ahsoka laughed lightly. “Seriously. There’s some distinct differences between Togruta and Humans when it comes to hitting their adolesence. You’ve already started to get the new sensory feelings from your montrals and lekku– that’s something you’ll eventually acclimate to with time. You’ll notice that even without relying on the Force, you’ll be able to notice things that most others cannot.”

“Then why is it so painful?” Vader asked, wincing.

“Sensory overload,” Ahsoka replied. “That’ll go away with time and meditation. You’ll also have to deal with soreness around the base of your montrals, lekku, and your breasts as they develop. You’ll also notice as you age that your skin will change as well.”

She gently traced her finger on her own white face markings. “These markings are biological, and change with age. Since we share the same DNA, I bet you’ll probably look… like, well, _me_ by the time you’re done with puberty.”

Vader merely nodded and sighed.

“That’s not all, though, is it?”

“No,” Ahsoka said apologetically. “There’s the usual humanoid problems of menstrual cycles, of course, but… for Togruta, there’s also the whole adrenaline problem.”

“Adrenaline problem?” Vader asked warily.

“During puberty, we have a heightened fight or flight response. This has the side-effect where we tend to tire and burn more calories than people our age. Do you remember back during our first go around this war, and how much I ate?”

“Oh,” Vader said, blinking in remembrance. “I do. That’s… going to be me, basically?”

“Yup,” Ahsoka said, with a half-grin at her friend. “It’s not all bad, though. You’re more robust than a human at your same biological age– and you can expect to see growth spurts to no end soon. Let me think, when I did my physical at the Temple before leaving for Christophsis… I believe they said I was 161 centimeters? The last time you and I saw each other, I was in my thirties and I was as tall as you were in your suit.”

“About 190 centimeters,” Vader murmured, before he laughed. “I guess I have that to look forward to.”

He sobered up some and looked at Ahsoka firmly, and she could see the exhaustion in his eyes. “Thank you for being here, Ahsoka. You… did not have to, but I appreciate the fact that you did.”

“Rest, Anakin,” Ahsoka murmured, gently resting her hands on Vader’s forehead and gently sending the suggestion to sleep. “I’ve missed you.”

Vader slept, only periodically waking up to eat the food that Ahsoka provided. Ahsoka found that she actually… _didn’t_ mind taking care of Vader that much. After all the things they’d gone through together, the suffering they’d experienced, and the lives they’d lived, it was almost refreshingly mundane. While Vader slept the first few days of puberty away in a haze of sensory overload and depression, Ahsoka continued their work in preparing for the slave uprisings.

Kitster and Wald were incredibly useful because they spoke Amatakka, and so passing information and news through the grapevines and finding former slaves who would serve as assistants to the weapons importing was easier than it otherwise would have been.

During this period, she briefly felt Count Dooku darken the planet’s Force signature with his presence, though he soon left again– no doubt part of Sidious’ grand conspiracy to coerce the Hutts to join the Confederacy’s campaign against the Republic. There was nothing they could do about Dooku’s coming and going, largely because it would invite an unpleasant amount of attention but… it impressed the celerity in which they needed to prepare their campaign.


	2. Sic Semper Tyrannus

Vader recovered from the bout of sensory overload, though the throes of puberty were just as impactful for him now as they had been during his previous life. Frequent mood swings became Vader’s new norm, punctuated by aggressive lightsaber duels and night-time crying.

Despite the tumult of his emotions, the former Sith refused to discuss or meditate on them beyond brief digressions in his personal logs, instead using them as a crutch to throw himself deeper into his work.

He rationalized it thus: They had a time-table to keep, lives to save– he had no time to work through his emotions.

This meant a lot of long hours spent looking over datapads full of schematics from slave inhibitor chips and their controllers, trying to identify specific weaknesses to make disabling chips and removing them from slaves an easy operation, without risking the health of the emancipated.

They had a few successful test cases, but the inconsistency was driving Vader up the wall. For Wald, they had managed to disable his chip without a problem, but the health concerns of _removing_ it were too severe. Removing it would have required extensive surgery, which was practically a crap-shoot on Tatooine. The logistics of this grand plan were on a knife’s edge because of the fact they were on a desolate planet with little in the way of supplies for underground freedom trails.

The strategic concerns were also something of a problem– and Vader spent a large amount of time trying to get a good strategic map of the galaxy at any given time. He wanted to know exactly what their anti-slavery crusade would be running into. If the Republic and Confederacy were distracted by their quarrel, they could operate with minimal interference… yet if they _were_ hemmed in by the two goliaths, it would make getting anything done incredibly difficult, if not outright impossible.

A knife’s edge indeed.

Despite his preoccupation with working himself to the bone, Ahsoka did try to help chip away at his reckless behaviour where she could– but she also tended to the shop more often, and did mechanic work for locals to bring in income that could be used to buy up armaments and other tools to help in the slave revolt.

And when she wasn’t doing that, she had also become something of a caretaker for Vader, making sure the ornery Sith ate enough calories so as not to pass out (which Vader _did_ do once, much to her consternation), and to not cause his new body– _her_ body, any permanent long-term damage.

She had lost him once. She wouldn’t lose him again.

…

“Vader, you have to get some sleep,” Ahsoka said, leaning against the doorway to Vader’s room one evening. They’d been up all day working on some projects, and while she had retired to bed, the former Sith hadn’t. The dim blue glow from Vader’s datapads illuminated the room, highlighting the tired lines that were visible underneath Vader’s eyes, and Ahsoka presumed, her own. “You _need_ sleep. You can’t get by without it like you used to.”

Vader blinked up at Ahsoka before scowling. “I’ll sleep when I figure out this problem,” he growled. “We’re so close to cracking this stupid problem and then it’s one thing off our list. If I can figure this out, then we can not only apply it to the slaves, but the clones.”

“Vader, you can’t fight every fire at once,” Ahsoka said. “The clones are a problem for another day.”

“There is not enough time,” Vader said flatly, though the exhaustion in his voice told all. “I have to save them all, or this is all just a wasted effort.”

Ahsoka sighed, massaged the bridge of her nose and stepped into the room, coming around Vader’s desk. She leaned in as if to read one of Vader’s datapads, but before Vader could react, she lulled him to sleep again with the Force. She lifted him up into her arms and carried him to bed.

“If you’re not going to look after yourself,” she muttered. “I’ll make sure I do.”

…

He couldn’t even bring himself to be angry anymore, as he sat on the edge of his bed, staring off at absolutely nothing.

Spending your whole life in the haze of murderous rage, only for it to break and the realization of the callous cruelty to come echoing back to you like a tremendous crescendo. It left Vader feeling helpless, weakened.

He hated feeling _helpless_ and weak. It was something he’d spent every waking moment of his life after Mustafar trying to not be– trying to assert his strength beyond his limitations and his injuries.

Yet here he was, paying some twisted penance by being stuck in the body of a fourteen year old Padawan, on a planet he’d long foresaken, trying to make amends for the blood on his hands.

He supposed he should be thankful. He had four limbs again, flesh ones. He had rejoined forces with one of the few people in his life who had been truly a blessing from Ar-Amu, and now he was doing what he’d always dreamed of doing as a child– freeing the slaves.

But why would the pain just not go away?

The Force itched at his skin like a terrible rash. Answers were out there, he just had to go find them. The chrono told him that it was just the earliest precipice of dawn. The sun would be coming up soon, and it was a fine time to do some self-searching.

Ahsoka was still asleep, and would likely sleep until the sun was up a little higher. Sighing, Vader leaned back in his bed, resting his head against his pillow and staring back at the ceiling.

Being back on Tatooine hurt, more than he could ever express. Years of memories and dreams suppressed so ruthlessly coming back with every moment he spent here, like a dam overfull, bursting with water that threatens to drown the valley below.

One of the lessons he’d learned as a child came to mind: _Dakkalu._ Strength, something time and time again redefined through the lens of other people’s experiences, stripped from him on Mustafar and made a sick, cruel shadow of a joke. The word felt like the sandy grit in between his teeth.

What was strength?

_“You’ve failed, Your Highness. I am a Jedi, like my father before me.”_

Strength was standing firm against overwhelming odds. Luke Skywalker– Vader had done as much research into his son as he could. His accent and his mannerisms screamed Tatooine. A life spent in the sand, looking up at the stars. The Jedi he could never be, far above and beyond his limited range. He never turned his back on those he loved, and still kept the dark from consuming him like a wild beast. He defied every convention, and Vader warmed with pride at the very thought.

In many ways, Vader mused– Luke was much like Padmé in temperament. Patient and unwavering, with the durasteel blade just underneath– with Skywalker’s eyes and hair, and Padmé’s smile.

The child of light, guiding him home again. He knew strength.

_“We are a peaceful planet!”_

Strength was the willingness to fight on after everything you’d ever loved and known was ripped from your hands by heartless evil. Leia Organa had watched the planet she’d been adopted by burn. She’d watched everything she loved torn away from her and destroyed by the callousness of the Empire, _by him_ and all that he supported. And yet… her faith in the Rebellion, the Republic, _democracy_ never wavered.

And where Luke was Padmé’s son, Leia was, despite the influence of Bail and Breha, certainly his daughter. She was a politician like Padmé, but that meant nothing. Her brazen attitude and ferocious defense of what she stood for had impressed him on the floor of the Galactic Senate during the Empire, and had impressed him further when she stood face to face with him and lied.

The great krayt dragon of Alderaan– the one who would not heel to the slavers.

_“This war represents a failure to listen.”_

Strength was never abandoning your principles, even if it meant standing against something you’d always believed in, yet knowing when to let go. In hindsight, Vader could admit that perhaps his marriage to Padmé was a mistake. He had killed her with his jealousy, ignorance, hatred.

Her strength was her words, her passion, her kindness. She had been used as a bloody instrument by Sidious, his instrument of usurping the Republic, of starting a war that lead billions to their slaughter, and the consecration of something that spat on the tattered remains of her beliefs.

Even in the end, she had shown strength.

A deranged, psychotic husband whose hands were stained in the blood of younglings.

She had intended to go alone to Mustafar to reason with him– damn the consequences. She had been willing to throw away the Republic if it meant keeping him safe and having their life together. But he had ruined it all, as he always did.

_“Then I will avenge his death.”_

Even after all those years, Ahsoka had never given up faith in Anakin Skywalker, and had been willing to go toe-to-toe with his murderer, even if they were ultimately one and the same underneath it all. Ahsoka Tano had been his sister in all but blood– they had become kindred souls on the field of battle, beneath raging storms of laser fire and in the cacophony of trying to defend a dying system.

Her loyalty, her _unwavering faith_ in the good and the righteous was a balm for the soul.

Vader felt so very tired now. His body was youthful, but twenty-three years of _omnicide_ could break anyone.

“You have an opportunity to do right,” came a wry voice at the door, causing Vader to flinch. He looked up to see Shmi Skywalker standing in the doorway, her hands folded in front of her.

“Why are you here?” Vader asked.

“As you well know, my child, the Force works in incredibly mysterious ways. Once you move on and join the Force, you… sort of exist outside of time. It is more than I could have ever expected.”

“I know,” Vader said, scowling. “I died before I ended up here.”

“Yes, you did,” Shmi said gently. “You’ve suffered more than I could have ever expected, and I am so sorry, Ani.”

“That is not my name,” Vader growled. “I can hardly be categorized as your child anymore.”

“You will _always_ be my child,” Shmi said patiently. “Do you remember the meaning of your name?”

“The trickster who brings the rains. _Ekkreth Anakin_ ,” Vader said, folding his arms. “But I can hardly be Anakin Skywalker when there is another crusading through the stars like an idiot.”

“That is true, but it is hardly his and his alone,” Shmi said with a laugh. “I have always believed in the good in you, my dear child. Did you know that?”

“Even after seeing all that I’ve done? The Tuskens? Order 66? How can you say that, knowing what kind of _monster_ I am?”

“Be better, then,” Shmi replied. “Isn’t that what you’re doing now?”

“Yes, but-”

“No buts,” Shmi reprimanded Vader, tutting. “That is tangible progress. Your first instinct upon arriving in this time was to fulfill the promises you made a long time ago.”

“Because it was convenient and allowed me to get revenge against Sidious,” Vader retorted.

“There were other ways to do it– some ways that might’ve even taken you to Coruscant, if you had pretended to be Ahsoka Tano. Here, you’ve removed yourself from the equation and have become a wildcard. Isn’t that fascinating?”

Vader snorted. “I suppose so.”

“Let go of the past– or the future, rather. You have been given a once-in-an-eternity chance to make things right. To live a _fulfilled_ life. Don’t squander that, Ani. Please.”

The former Sith hesitated, and looked away from Shmi. “I don’t know if I can.”

“You say you have blood on your hands. Whose blood? In this time, this universe, this exact moment, the only person whose blood is on those hands is Watto. _Watto!_ ”

“And that is different,” the former Sith murmured, nodding. “Slavers are nothing more than the lowest form of scum.”

Shmi gestured, as if to say ‘there you go’, earning a snort.

“You’re right, amu,” the teenager said with a grunt.

“There are just some things that mothers are good at,” Shmi said brightly, before approaching the former Sith and lowering her ghostly form onto the bed. Extending her arms out, the former Sith shivered as her presence in the Force brushed against his hands.

“I am proud of you,” Shmi said firmly. “Do you remember the prayers?”

“No,” the ex-Sith said softly.

“We are grateful, we are alive. We are your children, Mother. Come, come with the fire and rain. We are your people, deliver us.”

She gave the former Sith a smile. “Deliver them. Bring the rain… and not just to Tatooine, but every star in this galaxy. I know you can do it.”

The ex-Sith looked wryly at Shmi. “You believe that?”

“I do, with all of my heart.”

“Then I will do my best,” the ex-Sith said wryly. “I love you. I miss you.”

“I will be with you always,” Shmi said with a smile. “Be strong, and remember your name.”

In a blink, Shmi was gone. The room smelled briefly of tzai and the warmth of home, and left the feelings of want behind.

…

Ahsoka woke up and the first thing that hit her was the strong spiced smell crossing her nose. Rising from her bed, she followed the smell to its source– finding the short form of her former master preparing some form of tea along with what scraped by as a breakfast on Tatooine.

Ahsoka knew that with his heightened senses, her former master would’ve noticed her coming into the room, because he turned to her and flashed her a genuine smile– which practically floored her.

“Good morning, Snips,” he said gently. “I’m preparing breakfast and tea this morning. You should try the tea, it’s my mother’s recipe.”

“Your mother’s recipe?”

“Tzai tea is… important to our culture. They’re secrets belonging to mothers and grandmothers that are passed from mother to child. My mother taught it to me when I was eight, and it’s been so long since I’ve had it…”

“It smells wonderful,” Ahsoka said gently, accepting the cup from him and taking a drink of it. “Wow.”

“Right?” he grinned. “So I, actually, um… spoke to my mother this morning.”

“You did? I didn’t know she was a Force sensitive,” Ahsoka replied, surprised. “What did you two talk about?”

“About all this, about me– being me, and… other things,” he said with a hum. “I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, and she’s right. I should… use this opportunity to strike a new beginning. So… I’ve been giving it a lot of thought and…”

“Are you okay?” Ahsoka asked carefully, looking at the nervous Sith-turned-teen.

“I’m a mess, Ahsoka. I’m trying to get my words across. Um, I’m going to go by Leia Skywalker pretty much permanently now, even here. You can use feminine pronouns in Basic too.”

Ahsoka quirked her eyeridge. “Really?”

“I cannot be Anakin Skywalker, at least… not without _talking_ to him. It is his name, I can’t take that away from him. But… I can live up to the stories of the krayt dragon _and_ to the Princess of Alderaan and _be_ a better person. I told you that sexual characteristics and gender mean absolutely nothing to me, and they still do. But, I think this is a good way to start again.”

“I understand. In that case, maybe you should call me Maru?” Maru murmured with a smile. “Can I still call you Skyguy? Skygal, perhaps?”

“We are sisters now,” Leia said firmly. “You can call me that if I can call you Snips.”

“Deal,” Maru said with a grin, extending her hand to Leia.

Leia grinned back, grabbed Maru’s hand and shook it firmly. “Let nothing in this galaxy break our bond.”

“And may the Force be with us,” Maru replied, squeezing Leia’s hand. “Always.”

…

“If we continue to stockpile goods at our current rate,” Maru said thoughtfully. “We should be able to launch our revolt by Skyshine.”

Leia stilled before a smirk broke out on her face. “I know exactly how we’re going to do it.”

“You do?” Maru asked.

“Yes,” Leia responded, before grabbing a nearby datapad and pressing a few buttons and grinning. “The Hutts have a holiday called Boonta Eve, it’s to celebrate the ascention of one of their deities to godhood. Every year, Jabba invites the whole Hutt Clan to the Boonta Eve Classic.”

“You’re actually insane,” Wald bemoaned, shaking his head. “You want to launch a revolt on Boonta Eve? It’d be a slaughter.”

“Not if we prepare right. Most of the off-planet slaves are going to be a non-starter, but if we secure what needs to be secure before the riot starts, we can take them completely by surprise… we could also probably use some kind of bomb to kill the leaders of the Hutts. If we do that, it’ll destabilize the entirety of Hutt space.”

“It’ll attract a lot of attention,” Maru pointed out. “Killing the five major leaders of the Hutt clans? While launching a massive slave revolt on one of the busiest days of the year?”

“It’d spread the word through the Outer Rim. You’d be surprised just how little news spreads from the Outer Rim into the Inner Rim on any given day, particularly if the Republic and Seppies are too busy beating each other to death. We’ll have to see how the situation develops but this is probably our best bet to overthrowing the Hutt yoke.”

“Never by halves,” Kitster said in awe, before he sobered and glanced at his friend. “I trust you, Leia. But, what do we do after?”

“Help Tatooine form a government, then start really throwing a spanner into the Clone Wars,” Leia said triumphantly. “I have already come up with quite a few ideas.”

…

Despite the urge to intervene and create pure chaos, Leia and Maru laid low at first during the arrival of the Separatist forces to Tatooine for their second negotiations with Jabba, and the subsequent arrival of Anakin Skywalker.

“I can see it,” Leia murmured. “Skywalker’s ship has just crashed in the Dune Sea, along with his padawan and the hutt spawn. His apprentice, I’ve seen her before. She… was the Second Sister.”

“Second Sister? One of the Inquisitors?” Maru asked, looking curiously at Leia.

“Yes. Trilla Suduri,” Leia murmured, looking distantly off towards nothing, yet something of consequence. “It seems she was assigned to Skywalker’s side after your so-called demise. They are having a terse argument over him not enabling rear shields before their confrontation with Seppies.”

“I recall us having that same argument,” Maru said, grinning.

“Indeed,” Leia said dryly. “This is far worse, though. Their argument has none of the banter and diplomacy ours would have. There is none of the implicit trust you and I shared.”

“Is it that significant of a difference?” Maru asked, genuinely surprised.

“Yes, I can sense… Skywalker’s frustration, and Suduri’s anger. Do you think Skywalker can succeed against Dooku alone? Can their plan succeed?”

“The question is if Suduri is as capable of a Padawan. I don’t remember much about her,” Maru admitted.

“Her master in the original timeline was Cere Junda,” Leia commented, frowning. “She was never the most talented with a lightsaber among the Inquisitors, but she _was_ one of the most brutal. The dark side came to her so naturally, like a lightning rod.”

“That personality type seems like it would make the worst padawan for Anakin Skywalker ever,” Maru commented with a grimace.

“We could save Skywalker, but… what impact could that have?” Leia murmured. “Killing Dooku now would bring a lot of attention to Tatooine.”

“Saving Skywalker would raise a lot of questions,” Maru replied. “But the balance of history has already been completely eviscerated. Nothing is the same as it was the first time. The Battle of Christophsis and Teth carried on far longer than it did our history.”

“Time travel is the worst,” Leia murmured. “Kriff it. Let’s go save Skywalker’s ass. I have a plan that just might work.”

…

Dooku was so painfully obvious in his Sithness that it took Leia and Maru very little time to track down the Separatist Head of State. They found the Sith sitting on a speeder on a sand dune overlooking miles of nearly-empty desert, watching the distant figures of Anakin Skywalker, Artoo, and Trilla Suduri trekking through the sand, briefly passing by the bones of a long-deceased krayt dragon.

Leia and Maru, who weren’t far away from Dooku, were also watching the situation, though the younger Togruta had a deep frown on her face.

“He doesn’t even stop at the krayt,” Leia murmured. “What did you become, Skywalker, that you forgot your history?”

Climbing back onto their speeder, she and Maru sped off towards Dooku.

As they neared him, the old man seemed to pick up on their presence and twisted, his crimson lightsaber springing to life, a surprised look on his face.

Leia and Maru leapt from their speeders, lightsabers lit as well– Leia’s bright green one, and Maru’s two ghostly white.

“Jedi,” he hissed threateningly.

“Not quite,” Leia said. “The way I see it, Dooku, you’ve been played like a cheap Geonosian fiddle.”

“As if I would expect a child to understand anything of substance about this situation,” Dooku said dismissively, before he glanced at Maru. “Call off your apprentice, before she makes a mistake she cannot take back.”

“She is more than capable of fighting for herself,” Maru said, before Leia charged at Dooku, causing the elder Sith to narrowly dodge out of the way and block the attack. Leia refused to surrender the initiative, pressing the man’s defenses.

“You are _weak_ , Dooku!” Leia crowed, grinning predatorily at the former Jedi. “Sidious has blinded you with the promise of power. You don’t know what true power is, old man!”

Dooku threw up his hand, sending Leia sprawling onto the ground, but she rolled back and back onto her feet. Dooku launched a lightning attack at the young Togruta, which she absorbed with her lightsaber.

“Maru!” she shouted.

Dooku was forced to abandon his attack when Maru attacked with her two sabers. He only barely managed to block the attack, but even then, one could tell that several of his hairs on his beard became singed from the proximity of Maru’s sabers from his head.

Before he could retalliate, Leia let the Dark Side free from the cage, and squeezed her hand tight, depriving Dooku of oxygen. Startled, he looked at her, his face pale with shock.

“As I said, Dooku. You are _weak_ ,” she said gleefully. “I will show you the _true_ power of the Force, and you only then will you understand just how many mistakes you have made, and how your faith was so pointlessly put into _that devil._ ”

Before Leia could go too far, Maru put the old man to sleep. Releasing him from the Force choke, Leia’s eyes bled from their luminiscent burning orange to aqua blue again, and she flexed her fingers.

“I suppose even the best Sith Lords can barely make a dent in two masters,” she murmured. “Are we going to be able to hold him?”

“It’s possible,” Maru said with a nod. “He’s got some force-null bindings on him, I guess he intended to use them before killing Anakin and Trilla.”

After placing the bindings around Dooku’s wrists, they tied him up and loaded him onto the back of his own speeder, with Maru taking the pilot’s seat. The two took off back to Mos Espa, confident that the two Jedi were at the very least capable of dispatching any potential non-Sith enemies without a problem.

“I can’t believe we _captured Count Dooku_ ,” Leia said once they’d returned to their shop, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “I actually can’t believe we pulled that off.”

“The one thing I do not miss from this time period is how _self-assured_ the Sith and Jedi are,” Maru said with a snort. “Their strategic planning is actually garbage because of it. This is was actually probably the best possible outcome– think about it, with how quickly things are diverging…”

“The chances of us actually pulling this off at any other point is next to none,” Leia said with a grin. “We won’t be able to hold him forever, though. Sidious will get suspicious and start looking for his apprentice.”

“There is a lot of potential here,” Maru murmured. “The Separatists are pretty well entrenched in many parts of the galaxy. With a little power play here, we may very well be able to co-opt the entire Separatist movement for our own purposes.”

“I like that idea,” Leia purred, grinning at her friend.

…

The room was dark, and Yan cursed himself for underestimating his opponents. If he was able to dispatch some of the finest Jedi ever sent by the Order, he had presumed that these two renegade almost-Jedi could be easily destroyed. He hadn’t counted on the shorter one being a Sith. As he opened his eyes, he found himself staring into the same pair of orange eyes that had nearly killed him.

“You’re awake. Good,” she said simply, pulling a seat up and sitting in it. “It’s time we talked, Dooku.”

Yan looked down at his hands and realized that he had his own pair of Force-nulling cuffs on, and escape at this point was incredibly unlikely– doubly so considering the little girl or her friend probably had his lightsaber.

“It appears you have me at a disadvantage,” Yan said neutrally. “You know, someone with your skill in the Dark Side would have great promise. I can teach you more about the Dark Side than-”

He felt his throat close off and he gagged on the air being squeezed from his trachea. The pressure disappeared again and the girl gave him an unimpressed look.

“You should stop talking now and let me talk first,” the girl said dismissively. “The force works in mysterious ways, my dear Count. You are as pathetic now as you were the last time I killed your sorry hide.”

Yan blinked in surprise as the girl laughed.

“I will tell you the same thing I told Ventress,” the girl said, waving her hand as if to dismiss his surprise. “You are being played for a fool by an old man who only wants for himself. He has no intentions of sharing the future of the galaxy with _you_.”

“You have no idea the power my master possess-”

“Sheev Palpatine, Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, otherwise known as Darth Sidious, Lord of the Sith, formerly the apprentice to Darth Plagueis, the Sith Lord who was well-known for his mastery of matters of life and death.”

“You know?” Yan said, doing his best to reign in his shock.

“You, like Maul before you, was never Palpatine’s true goal of an apprentice. Sidious has always coveted the Chosen One, to mould him into a Sith weapon.”

“Skywalker,” Yan said idly. Suddenly, a lot of his master’s decisions on the war and the Jedi made a lot of sense. He still didn’t understand the girl’s motives. “But why does any of this have to do with you?”

The girl pressed her hand to his forehead and suddenly Yan got flashes of memories that weren’t his.

He saw himself fallen to his knees before criss-crossed blue and red sabers. His hands were missing, and he was begging for his life. The familiar growl of Sidious barked a command, and he watched his own head fall onto the floor lifelessly staring into the great expanse of the galaxy.

_“Henceforth you shall be known as Darth Vader.”_

Yan winced as he felt the death and chaos that reigned after those words were spoken. Millions of lives snuffed out in an instant, the Jedi Temple burning, the Galaxy shrouded in true darkness, the fires of Mustafar burning him alive.

The worst pain came when he felt billions of lives snuffed out in a halo of green death, one minute there, one minute gone. It was unbearable, and Yan could almost feel the _scar_ being gouged in the fabric of the Force as it shrieked in a chorus of suffering.

When the visions ended, he was sweating profusely, blood trickling from his nose. He sagged forth in his chair and vomited onto the floor, rejecting everything in his stomach and then some.

“Do you see _now_ what you’ve wrought upon this galaxy, Dooku?” The girl asked dangerously.

“Who… what are you?” Yan rasped, looking at the furious Togruta in horror.

“What do you think, Dooku?” she asked with contempt.

“Skywalker,” he murmured. “You are- were… Skywalker.”

“I am still a Skywalker,” she said dismissively. “Nothing, not even decades of misery and the Force can take away my name.”

“What do you want from me?” Yan asked faintly.

“You are an interesting person, Dooku. You are Sidious’ apprentice, yes, but you are also the leader of the Separatists. You are the bulwark against which the Republic grinds itself into oblivion. Do you understand exactly what _I_ want from you?”

Yan didn’t reply but merely stared at the girl– at this other Skywalker.

When he didn’t respond, she grabbed his chin and wrenched his head up to look at her. “The Sith and the Jedi are both lost in their dogmata. They are the old way that will be swept away by the tides of time. If _you_ join _us_ , Yan Dooku, you can be part of the greatest campaign for freedom in the galaxy. We will create a galaxy of free men, free women, free children _and freedom._ ”

She then sighed, letting go of Yan’s chin.

“My great-grandmaster,” she muttered. “We can save what’s left of our lineage. None of us have ever been orthodox Jedi– following the dogmatic line so blindly. We can salvage that spirit and build something that doesn’t rely so firmly on this banthashit dichotomy. Do you understand that?”

“Yes,” he said. “You seek to suborn Kenobi and Skywalker too?”

“Anakin Skywalker cannot be left to Palpatine’s tender mercies,” she said. “That boy– that _child_ does not deserve to suffer as I suffered.”

Yan didn’t reply, he merely watched as the Togruta girl’s eyes lightened and return to their crisp blue. She then looked at him again.

“Obviously, I cannot trust you yet. How long before you are expected to report to Sidious?” she asked.

Yan looked at her warily before bowing his head. “Three days.”

“I will give you time to think about my offer, Dooku. Think about the work you could do for the betterment of the galaxy, rather than for the whims of _him_.”

“You’re not going to kill me, Skywalker?” Dooku asked, slightly amused.

“Leia,” she said. “My name’s Leia now. And no. Killing you the first time didn’t do anything useful, and I don’t see why I should sully myself by killing you now. Every time you close your eyes, you will feel what I feel, and I think that is an appropriate punishment.”


	3. A Long-Awaited Encounter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The reality of life on Tatooine is made plain to Dooku, and an old friend of Maru and Leia enters their lives again...

Spending two days in a small room with what barely passed for food on Tatooine was enough to leave Yan feeling awful. He wondered how the dreadful people of this planet managed to live their lives in such a squalid state. He had been visited earlier that day by the elder of the two Force adepts, Maru, and she had removed his binds with the express placement of trust in him to not run.

And he hadn’t.

He had watched Maru and Leia through their daily operations. They had been apparently planning to launch a revolution on Tatooine to rid the galaxy of the Hutts once and for all, and the elderly former Jedi– now former Sith, really, was a mere spectator to their plans.

For Yan, however, it had been what he’d witnessed on the dawn of that Dawnday that pushed him over the edge. Pain rippling out into the Force had startled him from an already fitful rest (full of visions of the planet of Alderaan dying and the Force being ripped asunder into nothingness by a gleeful Sidious), in his drowsy haze, the man went looking for the source of the pain.

In the basement of their shop, he found Leia and Maru covered in the unsightly red ichor of human blood. As he stopped at the foot of the stairs, Leia’s eyes snapped up to him.

“Put a kriffing mask on, old man!” she shouted. “This is a sterile area!”

Maru floated a cloth mask over to him which he placed over his mouth and nose, before approaching the gurney. A young girl, no older than the one operating on her was sweating heavily, her eyes hazed and distant.

“What is-?”

“Slaves have small chips implanted in their bodies at various places. Some of them not too difficult to reach with minor surgery, some of them requiring deep surgery to remove,” Leia said, gesturing to the young girl’s open torso. “On Tatooine, we lack the medical equipment that most Core systems have, so we have to rely on domestic herbs and other items to numb the pain… but even then, sometimes because we are unable to sanitize equipment successfully, the slaves die on the operating table.”

“Can’t you just disable the chip?” Yan asked.

“Some of them can be disabled, yes, but the risks involved with leaving them in bodies can… _complicate matters unnecessarily_ ,” Leia muttered. “and in some cases, disabling them doesn’t work, and as soon as they come close enough to their master, ka-boom.”

“A-ha!” She exclaimed triumphantly, before holding up a small chip in her pair of tweezers. She looked up at Yan and narrowed her eyes. “Does this look familiar to you, Yan?”

“The clones,” he said quietly. “What better way to discredit the Jedi than to give them an _army of slaves_.”

“Not even starting with the abhorrent nature of the way the clones are produced and then implanted with brain chips that can make them kill pretty much anybody that Palpatine deems unfit to survive,” Leia commented idly. “But the idea that such a concept can be applied to more than just _clones_. Imagine brain chips becoming mandatory for service in the Imperial Fleet… or them being used by slavers for their chattel.”

She went back to working on the young girl’s stomach before sighing.

“It’s been a couple days, hasn’t it? Have you decided on a choice, Yan?” she asked, perching the ridge of her eye without looking at the old ex-Jedi.

Yan stared at the young girl before swallowing and nodding. “Yes. I will join you.”

He stepped over to Leia’s side and gently placed his hand across the escaped slave’s mid section. When he lifted his hand again, the surgery marks on the young girl’s body were gone.

…

Leia folded her arms as she watched Yan’s ship disappear from sight. The old man had given her a promise that he would support their ventures and efforts, but she remained wholly unconvinced. Duplicity was the way of the Sith, _however_ for everything she had ever known the old man to be, wholly dishonorable was not one of them.

As a token of his good will, he had given her a datastick full of tactical information on the Outer Rim as of the Teth campaign. It had allowed Leia and Maru to fully plot out exactly what they were facing up against.

“Hutt Space is closed off to the Separatists for now,” Leia murmured. “It would be a very interesting situation if the Hutts got drawn into the war off all this. We might be able to angle that too. The Hutts are a long-term threat to the stability of the Outer Rim. Removing them from the equation would bring a lot of bounty to a lot of impoverished worlds that were conquered by them.”

“I’m not going to support genocide, Leia,” Maru said dryly.

“No genocide, but expelling the Hutts from the worlds they conquered,” she said, gesturing to several key worlds that had fallen into Hutt hands in the last thousand years and still had a significant number of native inhabitants who served as a chattel underclass. “Plus, establishing a cordon sanitaire to prevent them from regaining their robust trade network.”

“Forcing them to bow to the Outer Rim collectively, rather than imposing their will,” Maru said thoughtfully. “It just might work.”

Less than a week after Dooku had left, Leia found herself speaking face to face with the dour former Jedi over holocom.

“Skywalker,” he greeted evenly that evening. “I wish to inform you that armaments will soon be coming into your possession.”

Leia gave him an incredulous look and the old man merely pressed on, unfazed. “They were originally materiel intended to be used for the invasion of Ryloth, however, some new developments in the Senate have… lead to changes in our military strategy. I am sure that you do not get any major news reports on that festering backwater planet, so I have taken the liberty of sending you it.”

Leia looked at the attachment he’d sent across and opened it. It was a holonet written news report of the day’s developments in the provisional capital of the Confederacy.

“In an extraordinary session called by Head of State Dooku… announcing the resignation of the Separatist Council, citing extraordinary circumstances involving internal power-plays and politicking between leading representatives of the Trade Federation, financial irregularities in the Banking Clan and… kriff, Dooku, did you even leave any of these people alive?”

“The first salvo, Skywalker,” Dooku said calmly. “The decapitation of the various conglomerates will limit their ability to mandate our campaigns. They had planned to subjugate Ryloth to serve as a center of forced labour. Per our previous conversations, clearly this is not what we need.”

“Clearly not,” Leia said dryly. “Do you have new plans?”

“The Malevolence will soon be complete, and from there we can launch a number of offensives. At the moment my intent is to continue consolidating the Outer Rim, and to try to pull some Mid-Rim systems into the orbit of the Confederacy. With our thorough liquidation of the Trade Federation and their ersatz allies, I was considering opening negotiations with Queen Jamilla of Naboo.”

“Of course you would pick kriffing Naboo,” Leia bemoaned, resting her head on the desk. “Is there something you need for me to do?”

“I do not know yet. I will inform you if the situation changes,” the old man said. “More than just mere military and diplomatic offensives, we still need to begin formulating a plan to deal with the Jedi and Sith.”

“That’s going to take years to put together, let alone implement in any significant form,” Leia mused. “We can discuss this after the uprising?”

“Of course. You can expect your shipment to arrive in four days. Dooku out,” he replied, and with that, his hologram vanished, leaving Leia chewing on the inside of her mouth at the current situation, wondering just how quickly things were going to snowball.

…

“I just spoke to Dooku,” Leia said unceremoniously as she stepped into their shared living room and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “He’s liquidated the leadership of the Separatist Council, and has scrapped a planned invasion of Ryloth in favor of supplying our uprising.”

Maru stared at her briefly before shaking her head. “He’s definitely trying his best to turn things on their head. I guess taking a direct leadership role in the droids might be of some help but…”

“He’s going to try to open negotiations with Naboo,” Leia said flatly, scowling. “We may be called upon for help in negotiations. Dooku alone is going to raise eyebrows, but if he has two people who are overtly neutral…”

“All the better, though this does likely put you in a position where you’ll be forced to come face to face with _her_.”

“Yes,” Leia hissed. “As much as I’d really just rather not. Why did I bother faking a death and escaping the Republic only to come face to face with every kriffing ghost of my past? What’s next, Obi-Wan Kenobi showing up at my front door? Anakin Skywalker challenging me to a duel to the death for the right of our name?”

“Leia, relax,” Maru said lightly. “You’ll be fine.”

Leia’s fears seemed to be manifested into reality when Dooku arrived on-planet on the Sunpeak 8, and darkened the doorstep of their shop.

“I have made contact with the Queen,” he said without preamble, his lips drawn into his default sneer. “She has dispatched the Senator to conduct negotiations on her behalf with me. Tatooine is an appropriate middle-ground that will give us some leverage to… cultivate sympathies.”

“The Senator of Naboo,” Leia muttered, scowling. “I doubt she’ll have much sympathy for you, Yan. You’ve been instrumental in trying to have her murdered numerous times already.”

“Exactly why I will have you two and your friends present. This is not a matter of _me_ trying to win her support, but trying to pivot the Separatist movement to something far more noble than playing to the whims of a Sith Lord,” Yan responded airily, shooting a raised eyebrow at the scowling fourteen year old. “She does not need like me, but we can at least work together if she’s smart.”

“I can hear the Force laughing at me,” Leia grumbled.

“Padmé can’t haunt you forever, Leia,” Maru said firmly. “She’s _alive_. Cherish that fact.”

“Fine, you’re right. When will she be here?” Leia asked, glancing back at the Separatist leader.

“Two days,” Dooku muttered. “I have Asajj on protection detail to make sure she arrives here unmolested. Queen Jamila pressed upon her extreme secrecy, but I can only wonder how much Sidious might know.”

“If she didn’t run her mouth to Anakin or the Chancellor, she’s probably fine,” Leia muttered.

…

Padmé Amidala was many things– an idiot was not one of them. When the Queen had contacted her with specific instructions to attend a meeting with _Count Dooku_ of all people, she had been suspicious. However, when _Tatooine_ had been mentioned, along with third-party arbitrators… and then the confused rumors of potential purges in the highest ranks of the Separatist movement, the former Queen’s _interest_ in the matter had been piqued.

Even more so when on her way to Tatooine, she had been informed that the rumors were true– Dooku had _purged_ the Trade Federation from top to bottom. Nute Gunray had died a miserable death and she wasn’t ashamed to admit that she was _thrilled_ about it.

The strangest part was when she’d approached Separatist space only to be escorted by Dooku’s right-hand assassin, Asajj Ventress. The scowling woman had instructed her to fall into formation and that they were aiming for Mos Espa. Captain Typho had been a little alarmed at the… nonchalantness of the whole thing, but had complied with the orders.

As Tatooine came into sight, Padmé’s comm chirped and she answered it. Count Dooku stood before her in a pale hologram, hands folded behind him.

“Senator,” he said. “I hope getting here has not been of any concern?”

“No,” she replied cooly. “It has been surprisingly quiet.”

“Quiet is good, Senator. I am relaying the coordinates for where you are to land, and where our meeting will be held. I assume I do not need to tell you that your _discretion_ is key?”

“Of course,” she said, narrowing her eyes as the holo vanished.

“I still don’t trust this,” she murmured. “I understand _why_ I shouldn’t have brought Anakin or Obi-Wan along but… still. Something feels… off.”

Her feeling didn’t go away even after they’d landed on the planet, put on unassuming garb, or made their way on speeders through the streets of Mos Espa. In fact, the off-kilter feeling of this whole thing intensified when she realized that she _recognized_ the building that was set as their meeting point. The very same junk shop that Master Jinn and _Padawan_ Kenobi had taken her to ten years ago to search for parts for her ship.

The same shop where she’d met “little Ani”, the golden-haired angel that grew up to be her angsty war hero husband.

She decided to keep that particular tid-bit in her pocket, and approached the building cautiously. Opening the door, she noted that the shop had changed very little since she’d last been there, though perhaps it was a bit brighter and cleaner. As she stepped forward, a short Togruta girl rose from behind the counter, blaster pointed at her in surprise.

Padmé noticed the girl cringe a bit as she seemed to recognize her.

“Senator Amidala,” she said without preamble, glancing at Typho who had drawn his blaster in response. “I apologize for the less than warm welcome, but one can never be too careful of the sorts of people you meet on Tatooine.”

She tucked her blaster back down under the counter, and gestured at them both.

“Please, come through to the back of the shop. We’re waiting for you.”

Padmé didn’t trust herself to speak, merely nodded, and followed the young Togruta’s instructions to pass through the door to the back of the shop. Typho followed closely behind her.

“Senator,” Dooku said, though it was perhaps the first time in her life she’d heard the ex-Jedi Master refer to her in any sort of _amicable_ way. “I am glad to see you got here without any disruptions.”

“Indeed, we had a surprisingly easy trip,” Padmé said, observing the darkened room. The short Togruta girl had moved over to the far side of the table and was standing by an older Togruta woman– Padmé assumed given their appearance, they were mother-daughter. Though, the lightsabers hanging from their sides had the Senator’s interest piqued.

She startled when she realized that the younger Togruta was staring back at her, though her expression was indecipherable. She glanced away before glancing at the slightly darker-skinned human and the Rodian sitting on some crates in the corner. Her eyes then fell on Asajj Ventress, who was seated in a small chair next to Count Dooku.

“Senator,” the youngest one, the girl, spoke up. “How much do you know of slavery on Tatooine?”

Padmé startled before frowning. “It is an unfortunate reality,” she said calmly. “I am rather ashamed to admit that I did not know it existed in the Outer Rim until I was 14, and have had the misfortune of seeing what impact it can have on the lives of good people I’ve known.”

“Your husband,” the girl said almost _casually_. Padmé froze on the spot, blinking incomprehensibly at the fourteen year old, before realizing _what_ it was the girl had said, and the fact she had said it in _fluent Nubaé_. Padmé’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.

It took every ounce of her to stay calm, but that was only on the outside. On the inside, she was definitely screaming her head off.

“Yes,” she replied. “How do you know about that?”

“You would be surprised at what I do know, Senator,” the girl said with a wave of her hand. “But that is not the point. At the present time, you have been asked here because the Separatist movement is changing objectives. No longer will we play into the hands of a Sith Lord, but rather work for the common good of the galaxy.”

“Just what is the common good to you?” Padmé responded, folding her arms across her chest.

“The emancipation of every sentient and droid,” the girl replied. “Equality among sexes, races, classes; the purge of corrupt bodies who have long outlived their purpose as administrative oversaight, and an unparalleled end to authoritarianism where it stands, plus the establishment of democratic governance on every world. But it all begins here: with a slave revolt on Tatooine.”

“You expect me to believe this blindly?” Padmé asked. “Count Dooku and his _assassin_ have tried to kill me numerous times, and have been the architects of the largest galactic war since the Mandalorian Wars.”

“Senator, allow me to be plain,” the girl said. “You don’t have the _luxury_ of choosing. Darth Sidious has an iron grip on the Republic and the Republican Senate already, and is a mere three years away from fulfilling his life-long dream of creating a Galactic Empire in which he is the judge, jury and executioner– and turning your husband into his attack dog.”

“You’re wrong,” she replied testily. “Anakin is a good man, he’d never betray the Republic, or the Jedi.”

“Am I?” the girl replied darkly, her voice dripping with scorn as she stepped forward in the light, and moved towards the Senator. “What did he do when he found his mother dead at the hands of Tusken Raiders? What did he do, Senator? He killed them. He killed them all. Not just the men, but the women and children too. He slaughtered them like animals. Anakin Skywalker is permanently two steps from falling to the Dark Side, and you want to stick your head in the sand and pretend he isn’t being _groomed_ to fall?”

The girl sighed and seemed to retreat into herself, before giving her an impetuous glance. “The galaxy is in dire jeopardy. Your _husband_ and _family_ and _future_ are all in dire jeopardy.”

The girl’s hand grazed her head, and suddenly she could see it.

Sabé… and the rest of her handmaidens standing before a large stone monument, blasters at the ready, ferocity on their faces. Hatred, disdain, misery. The Force swirling around them with grief and self-hatred. With a glance up, Padmé felt her blood run cold as she stared into the stony visage of her own face. The image blurred briefly before it showed the inside of the cold, dark mausoleum. At the end of the corridor, she could make out a stained glass window depicted with her in traditional Nubéian maternal garb.

Just below the window, she saw a large stone slab with her coat of arms chiseled into it, the flag of Naboo and some other polity draped over it majestically, in tribute.

The images faded, and she found herself staring back into the glowing orange eyes of the young Togruta girl.

“Do you understand _now_ , Senator?” The girl seethed, clearly flagging, struggling to stay on her feet. “If you remain on the path you are on, you are going to die, and the entire galaxy will suffer because of it.”

“What was that?” Padmé asked, her voice barely above a whisper. “What _was that_?”

The girl held her gaze for a moment, “My greatest regret for the last twenty-three years of my first life.”

Padmé Amidala was not an idiot. The Force was practically screaming around her, and she could _hear it._ For the first time in her life, she could _hear it._

“Anakin?” she asked, and the Force seemed to ring with _truth_.

The Togruta let out a bitter laugh. “You have haunted me for so long, and now you’re here and it still hurts.”

“I don’t understand,” Padmé said. “Why- how-”

“It is a very long and… irritating story,” Leia said in Basic, folding her hands in her dress pockets. “We can discuss it over some tzai tea.”

A couple hours later, Padmé desperately wished she’d kept that bottle of Alderaani spirits from Bail. She needed to process just what the _kriff_ she’d been told by the young Togruta who was… _apparently_ a version of her husband? One that had gone through this pestilential war, fallen to the Dark Side, been at least partially guilty of her death, and subsequently spent twenty-three years on a murderous rampage before… being saved by their _son_ and then waking up as a Togruta Jedi initiate– the one who was supposed to be her husband’s padawan, in fact… who was also sent back in time as a grown adult in an entirely separate matter.

And that was just the abbreviated version.

The worst part of the whole thing was less _that_ complicated mess of psychology and… trauma, but the fact that the Sith Lord that had been the epicenter of some of the worst tragedies of the last ten years was _the Chancellor_. A friend of hers, and the man who had helped her begin her political career in the Senate. The man that _she_ had gotten installed in power by helping depose Chancellor Valorum.

It made her nauseous.

“I’ll need time to think about… all of this,” she admitted truthfully, glancing at Leia carefully. “Are you sure this is the best place for you to be? You’ve told me numerous times that you hate this place.”

“I still do,” Leia admitted. “However, this is my home, just as it was our son’s home. I must do what I can to see it freed from the Hutts. Perhaps some day I can find happiness elsewhere.”

Padmé watched as Leia rose to her feet and looked at the assembled group. She frowned briefly before a glint of something appeared in her eye. She folded her hands inside of the sleeves of her dress and looked at them carefully. “We would be honoured if you would all join us for a meal before we go our separate ways for now.”

…

Leia found returning to base and doing something as mundane and useless as _cooking_ served a therapeutic purpose. Taking the sharp kitchen blade, she sliced through a piece of desert cactus fruit and trimmed not just the spines off of its outer surface, and subsequently quartered it before tossing it into a large metal basin that was placed over an open flame. The sizzling began immediately and she gave a toothy grin.

With her attentions turned to another facet of the meal, the only way she noticed someone entering the room was from her heightened senses.

“That smells delicious,” Padmé commented. “What is it?”

“Shayar,” Leia responded, glancing at her. “Tatooine doesn’t have a lot in the way of native flora, so we’ve always used what we can to get by. Tzai is made from some of the flowers and herbs that grow in the shade of rock formations, shayar tends to grow on moisture farms, along with mushrooms.”

“Anakin’s never talked about… Tatooine, or anything on it,” Padmé admitted.

“I know,” Leia said. “It’s trauma, Padmé. But for me, there are far worse things in my life that haunt my nightmares. The nine years I spent at my mother’s side as a slave to Watto were simple compared to the twenty I spent as a slave to Sidious. I’ve made peace with all of that. Here, help me. Watch the shayar, when you hear the sizzling change sounds, flip it, alright?”

“Right,” Padmé said, stepping over to the frying basin and watching the fruit. Leia went to task carving up some selections of bantha meat.

“Do you think I should talk to Anakin, see if I can get him to open up about Tatooine?” Padmé asked.

“Expecting Anakin Skywalker to have any sort of emotional depth is like asking the skies here to provide rain,” Leia responded. “The only way you’re going to get him to work through his problems is by taking him out of this banthashit war and forcing him to go to therapy.”

“What if he met you? You could explain to him-”

“That won’t help. He’d just stubbornly deny everything I said, and if I did to him what I did to Dooku, it would drive him mad with grief– and he’d go through the same horrible collapse that I did,” Leia said, shaking her head. She hesitated before placing her knife down on the table.

“There will come a time,” she said simply. “where he will have to make a choice. You will simply have to work to ensure he makes the correct one. However, Padmé– you must keep him away from Palpatine.”

The two women lapsed into companionable silence.

When everything was done, the meal was served, and the assembled group of Leia, Maru, Wald, Kitster, Typho, Padmé, Asajj and Dooku sat around their stone table.

“It is tradition on Tatooine to allow the elder to have the first sample of the meal,” Leia said, gesturing to Dooku. “If you should so wish to accomodate, Yan.”

“Thank you for your hospitality, Skywalker,” he said, taking the first bite of food– the fried shayar, which he gave a pleased hum. “Delicious. It reminds me a great deal of some of the delicasies from Serenno.”

As everyone dug in, there were pleased sounds from pretty much everyone.

“Anakin’s been holding out on me, the little brat,” Padmé said as she took a bite of the bantha curry. “This is absolutely delicious.”

“I’ll make sure you have the recipe, Padmé,” Leia replied. “You can substitute many of the ingredients with things from the Core and it will be almost completely the same. Anakin may appreciate something that reminds him of his mother… and you have just as much right to the family recipes as I do, as you are a Skywalker too.”

“It’s a good thing we’re all from the Mid or Outer-Rim,” Leia said with a smirk. “In my experience, Core and Inner-Rim people barely know how to handle spice. I know for a fact that Obi-Wan Kenobi is particularly sensitive to it.”

“Of course Kenobi would be weak like that,” Asajj said with a snort. “Core Worlders are so _sensitive_.”

“When Senator Organa visited Naboo about a year or two ago,” Padmé said. “He tried some food at the Liberation Day festival in Theed, and ended up throwing up because of how spicy it was. I warned him but he refused to listen to me that it might be a bit much for him.”

“A commiseration for Anakin Skywalker, whose tastebuds are being actively murdered by the Jedi Order,” Leia said with false mournfulness.

“You know, Leia, we’re technically from the Expansion Region,” Maru said.

“Tell me with a straight face that Shili _ever_ had food as bland as the Jedi Temple,” Leia said seriously.

“That’d be a lie, so no,” Maru replied with a snort.

“Besides, Outer Rim culture is irrespective of race,” Leia said, waving her hand. “Humans, Togruta, Twilek, Dathomiri, Rodian, it does not matter. They all end up here in thrall and adapt.”

…

“How are you feeling?” Maru asked, leaning against the frame of Leia’s doorway. “Today has been a trying day for you.”

“You could say that,” Leia replied with a snort as she pulled her nightgown down over her head. After she smoothed out the hem of it, she sighed and gave Maru a weary look. “I think I _handled_ Padmé exceptionally well, even if the sight of her makes me hurt deep inside.”

“You did,” Maru replied. “I’m proud of you, Leia.”

“Thank you,” Leia said, rubbing her jaw. “I still don’t know if I’ll ever be completely okay, but… being here, participating in the culture I’d long forsaken, honoring my mother’s sacrifice and her life… and doing what I promised, it’s helping. Thank you again for being here with me.”

“Of course,” Maru said soothingly. “Do you think this universe’s Anakin will be swayed?”

“If Padmé can keep him away from Palpatine, yes,” Leia said with a nod. “However, that will not be easy. The man was very good at making himself out to be the _only_ sympathetic ear in the entire galaxy.”

Maru folded her arms. “Crazy idea: What if we kidnapped him like we kidnapped Dooku?”

Leia started laughing, before shaking her head. “No– absolutely not,” she said mirthfully. “Kidnapping him would bring a lot of attention down on us for one– the Jedi wouldn’t like their Chosen One being snagged, and neither would Palpatine. Furthermore, he’s stronger than Dooku is _even on a bad day_ , and thirdly: as I told Padmé, forcing him to learn what I know would just drive him insane. Seeing himself choke his wife to death, or lead an army of clones into the temple to slaughter the Jedi younglings? Absolutely not.”

“I have faith that he will do what is right when the time comes,” she said firmly.

**Author's Note:**

> The bits of this fic you see that are related to Tatooine Slave Culture (amatakka, tzai, "Ekkreth" and other things) all belong to the glorious user Fialleril (here and on Tumblr). They're the genius behind making Tatooine more than just a useless sand ball.


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